Steve Walker - Habakkuk of Ice
BBC Radio 4: The Friday Play
Broadcast: Friday 17th August 2001 @ 9:00 p.m.
In 1942 the Allies were already developing plans for the re-occupation of Europe, and Winston Churchill favoured large floating
platforms to support the landings. In addition the allies were suffering heavy merchant shipping losses from German U-boats, due,
largely, to the limited range of patrolling aircraft and the resulting "mid Atlantic Air Gap." Churchill therefore welcomed the idea of
building large ships made of ice as presented to him by Lord Louis Mountbatten,
Mountbatten was Chief of Combined Operations, an organisation responsible to the Chiefs of Staff for the development of equipment
and special craft for offensive operations. One of his scientific advisers, Geoffrey Pyke, presented the idea of constructing
"berg-ships" - up to 4,000 feet long, 600 feet wide and 130 feet in depth – that could be made cheaply, and in great numbers, from ice.
The ships would be insulated and cooled, made practically invulnerable to bombs or torpedoes. They could be used by aircraft to
provide protection for shipping, particularly in the mid Atlantic, and as a base for invasion. With Winston Churchill’s enthusiastic
endorsement, the project got underway.
This is the true and extraordinary story of a battleship made entirely of ice but left to dissolve in a lonely Canadian lake called
Patricia in northern Alberta and of its eccentric english inventor, Geoffrey Pyke, whose brainchild it was.
Tim McInnerney ................ Professor Geoffrey Pyke
Dermot Crowley ........................... J. D. Bernal
Melanie Hudson .......................... Pamela Pleens
Chris Emmett ........................ Winston Churchill
David Holt ........................... Lord Mountbatten
Kerry Shale ............................ Jack Mackenzie
Bradley Lavelle ............................ C. D. Howe
William Hope ............................. The Narrator
Sean Baker ........................ The British General
Joshua Phillips .......................... The Boy Pyke
Jenny Stoller .......................... Mrs. Mary Pyke
Other parts were played by members of the company.
Directed by Andy Jordan
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